'I am a person stuck with unrequested labels, Northern, female
Short-sighted, red-haired, maladroit
I worked for others, as a student, parent, activist, poet
Some labels I aspired to: Quaker, world traveller, true artist, cook
And others came from cruel authority,
Dispensed regardless…’too disabled’... to be me
That closed some minor official’s little book
Upon my whole life’s purpose…
But I live for human rights and human worth
I did not earn or deserve their scornful look.

I am a human being
I am real.
And you can watch me for this hour
To find out how I feel...
Those officials cursed me with the label of disability/impairment/deficit/
Of being one of ‘them’, not one of ‘us’.

But I am human, I am real.
I am a person who can feel.
I will defeat their bureaucratizing zeal.

Now look into the utter folly of their fear.
It is every person’s potential power that I reveal
By simply standing here.

All my life I am saying
“What’s my job?!” and
taking whatever I hear about
as maybe the Answer.

My job is being crazy,
having a headful
of ideas that have
driven everyone insane
and making antibodies.

My job is having no job
to put before our
job with The Big J.

Every time I think
I have an answer to the
American Question:
“What do you do?”
it turns out sooner or later I’m
laid off from every Identity.

Some day, people say, the answer
will be “I’m dying!”

Meanwhile I'm a flower
sneezing in the Spring air.

Forrest Curo
May 5, 2003
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Anyway, while poetry gives the essentials in some sense... it doesn't necessarily do the job for conveying specifics, which might(?) matter. (Something really upsetting has sometimes resulted in one bad poem... and then another poem, much clearer, about it... and a day later, a completely different poem about the same thing.)

I gather you were/will-be out 'standing' for the recognition of some human truth vs ... well, some manifestation of the Public Lie, the sort of thing I was talking about here:

Dear Civilization

I'm running a fever like the Earth
to cure the sickness of your medicines

I've met some good people doing social worker gigs, working harder than anyone should have to and being paid far less than they were worth. But probably one can see a little clearer on this side of the desk.

Mainly, I think the powers-that-be have lots of people climbing over one another for a chance to do Right Livelihood in some humanitarian way. & for those who win, it too often turns out to mean working within a harsh and stingy system that practically forces poor people to lie in order to receive any aid whatsoever.